The National Cancer Institute and Department of Veterans Affairs Interagency Group to Accelerate Trials Enrollment (NAVIGATE): A federal collaboration to improve cancer care.

Cancer clinical trials represent an important option for patients with a diagnosis of cancer and the clinician-investigators involved in their care who seek options for their disease. For all who are impacted by cancer, these studies offer opportunities for greater learning. Conducting these important studies involves several challenges, including recruiting eligible participants.

Feasibility of a Centralized Clinical Trials Coverage Analysis: A Joint Initiative of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the National Cancer Institute.

Purpose: Clinical trial billing compliance is a challenge that is faced by overburdened clinical trials sites. The requirements place institutions and research sites at increased potential for financial risk. To reduce their risk, sites develop a coverage analysis (CA) before opening each trial.

Assessing Clinical Trial-Associated Workload in Community-Based Research Programs Using the ASCO Clinical Trial Workload Assessment Tool.

Purpose: Clinical research program managers are regularly faced with the quandary of determining how much of a workload research staff members can manage while they balance clinical practice and still achieve clinical trial accrual goals, maintain data quality and protocol compliance, and stay within budget. A tool was developed to measure clinical trial-associated workload, to apply objective metrics toward documentation of work, and to provide clearer insight to better meet clinical research program challenges and aid in balancing staff workloads. A project was conducted to assess the feasibility and utility of using this tool in diverse research settings.

Clinical Trial Assessment of Infrastructure Matrix Tool to Improve the Quality of Research Conduct in the Community.

Purpose: Several publications have described minimum standards and exemplary attributes for clinical trial sites to improve research quality. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) Community Cancer Centers Program (NCCCP) developed the clinical trial Best Practice Matrix tool to facilitate research program improvements through annual self-assessments and benchmarking. The tool identified nine attributes, each with three progressive levels, to score clinical trial infrastructural elements from less to more exemplary.

Organizational and physician factors associated with patient enrollment in cancer clinical trials.

Background: Our purpose was to identify physicians' individual characteristics, attitudes, and organizational contextual factors associated with higher enrollment of patients in cancer clinical trials among physician participants in the National Cancer Institute's Community Clinical Oncology Program (CCOP). We hypothesized that physicians' individual characteristics, such as age, medical specialty, tenure, CCOP organizational factors (i.e.

Measuring clinical trial-associated workload in a community clinical oncology program.

Purpose: The ability to quantify clinical trial-associated workload can have a significant impact on the efficiency and success of a research organization. However, methods to effectively estimate the number of research staff needed for clinical trial recruitment, maintenance, compliance, and follow-up are lacking. To address this need, the Wichita Community Clinical Oncology Program (WCCOP) developed and implemented an acuity-based workload assessment tool to facilitate assessment and balancing of workload among its research nursing staff.

Achieving high cancer control trial enrollment in the community setting: an analysis of the Community Clinical Oncology Program.

Determining the factors that lead to successful enrollment of patients in cancer control clinical trials is essential as cancer patients are often burdened with side effects such as pain, nausea, and fatigue. One promising intervention for increasing enrollment in cancer control trials is the National Cancer Institute's Community Clinical Oncology Program (CCOP). In this article, we examined CCOP staffing, policies, and procedures associated with enrollment in control trials.

Organizational designs for achieving high treatment trial enrollment: a fuzzy-set analysis of the community clinical oncology program.

Purpose: To examine the organizational design features that were consistently associated in 2010 with high levels of patient enrollment onto National Cancer Institute (NCI) cancer treatment trials among the oncology practices and hospitals participating in the NCI Community Clinical Oncology Program (CCOP).

Methods: Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis was used to identify the recipes (ie, combinations of organizational design features) that CCOPs used to achieve high levels of patient enrollment onto NCI treatment trials in 2010. Four organizational design features were examined: number of open treatment trials with at least one patient enrolled, number of newly diagnosed patients with cancer, number of CCOP-affiliated physicians, and number of CCOP-affiliated hospitals or practices where patient enrollment could occur.

Engaging referring physicians in the clinical trial process.

By building relationships with referring physicians and educating them about the clinical trial process, oncologists can help increase trial accrual among patients with cancer.

Kansas office-based nurses' evaluation of patient tobacco cessation activities.

In this study, we examined the tobacco cessation efforts of nurses working in primary care settings. A 43-item questionnaire was mailed to 1,036 office-based nurses located throughout Kansas. With a response rate of 50.